Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump keeps harping on what he believes is a love affair between himself and “the Hispanics.”

They’ll love me, Trump proclaims, because he employs so many of them to work in his business empire. The anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric that labels Mexican immigrants coming into this country — albeit illegally — as “rapists, drug dealers, murderers” … along with “some good people, too” — well, that doesn’t matter, according to Trump.

Then he got into this highly visible spat this week with Jorge Ramos, a new anchor and reporter for the Spanish-language network Univision.

Trump was taking questions from reporters in Dubuque, Iowa, when Ramos interrupted him. Trump got agitated at Ramos’s persistent questioning of how Trump intended to build a 1,900-mile wall across the country’s southern border.

To be fair, Ramos did barge into another reporter’s question. He shouldn’t have been so rude to his colleague.

Then again, Trump could have answered Ramos’s question and gone on to the next questioner. He didn’t do that.

He waved a bodyguard over, and then the bodyguard forcibly removed Ramos from the meeting room.

Outside the room, a man wearing a Trump lapel badge, told Ramos to “got back to your country,” to which the Mexico-born Ramos replied that he is an American citizen.

Ramos came back into the interview room later and got to ask his question. He sparred with Trump a bit more.

I just wonder how Trump actually believes — if he truly does believe it — that Hispanic voters are going to continue lovin’ on the candidate when he treats individuals such as Jorge Ramos so rudely.

Like this:

Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke has declared his support for Donald Trump.

I should just let that statement stand on its own.

But I cannot.

This’ll be brief.

Duke’s past is as reprehensible as it gets. He’s now thrown in with Trump, the current Republican Party presidential front runner.

“So although we can’t trust him to do what he says, the other Republican candidates won’t even say what he says. So he’s certainly the best of the lot. And he’s certainly somebody that we should get behind in terms, you know, raising the image of this thing.”

I’m not for a nanosecond going to suggest that Trump share’s Duke’s KKK dogma. I am going to suggest that Duke — no matter what he says about himself or the organization to which he belonged — cannot shed his past.

Duke’s obituary is going to include a KKK reference. And we all know about the murder, misery and mayhem that it has committed against other Americans.

Like this:

Some of us have lamented the horse-race emphasis on the media’s political coverage.

The media become much too focused on polls and on who’s up and who’s down.

Donald Trump is clearly “up” in the Republican presidential primary campaign. All 16 of the other GOP candidates are “down.”

But as in an actual horse race, the GOP campaign is turning suddenly into a match race — featuring just two candidates.

They are Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The rest of them include some serious and intelligent individuals. I would rate Gov. Bush in that serious and intelligent category. Trump? He’s in another category altogether. He’s intelligent. He’s also inarticulate and doesn’t possess an ounce of nuance, decorum — or an understanding that the presidency is not an oligarchy, that it contains far less power than Trump seems to suggest it does.

The two of them are resorting to some serious character attacks. Trump calls Bush a “low-energy candidate.” Bush counters that Trump isn’t a “true conservative.”

Indeed, it fascinates me that conservative Republicans are taking the gloves against Trump, accusing him of being a RINO, aka Republican in Name Only. As Jeb Bush said, according to the Texas Tribune, of Trump’s proposal to build a wall along our nation’s southern border: “Mr. Trump’s plans are not grounded in conservative principles,” Bush said. “The simple fact is his proposal is unrealistic, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it will violate people’s civil liberties, it will create friction with our third largest trading partner, it’s non-necessary, and I think he’s wrong about this.”

It’s also interesting to me that Democrats have been oddly silent as Trump goes after Bush, and Bush returns fire against Trump. They’re leaving the anti-Trump rhetoric to the rest of that increasingly anonymous Republican field.

I remain amazed that this year’s GOP campaign has become so entertaining. I thought the 2012 Republican field set the entertainment bar so high that no future primary campaign in either party would reach it.

Silly me. The 2016 GOP field has exceeded my expectation.

However, right now it’s just the two “leaders” — Donald Trump and Jeb Bush — providing the entertainment.

Or, to paraphrase a hackneyed film line from the 1970 film “Love Story”: Arrogance means you never lower yourself to say you’re sorry.

Trump dissed Kelly upon her return to the air after taking a brief break. Kelly had the temerity during the initial Republican primary presidential joint appearance to ask Trump about comments he’d made about women that many had considered to be misogynistic and sexist.

Trump then ripped into Kelly for asking the question. The Trump vs. Fox feud has been boiling over ever since.

Ailes is right to demand an apology. He won’t get one.

It’s not Trump’s style.

As Trump himself keeps telling us: Why should he change a thing? Those polls give him all the affirmation he needs.

Like this:

Let’s get some conversation started on this birthright citizenship business.

A number of Republican Party presidential candidates want to do away with the constitutional provision that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States of America.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants it to remain a right of “natural-born” Americans. He writes this:

“Ending ‘birthright citizenship’ used to be an idea embraced by far-right whackos. But since Trump trumpeted it, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Scott Walker, Rand Paul and others have joined him. Even Chris Christie now says the current policy needs to be ‘re-examined.’ And Jeb said today he doesn’t find the term ‘anchor babies’ offensive in the slightest.

“Can we get a grip? The right of anyone born in the United States to be an American citizen lies at the core of the post-Civil War concept of citizenship. It underlies the entire framework of rights and governance built around citizenship — including the 14th Amendment. It undergirds our entire history of immigration. And it prevents America from having permanent underclass of non-citizens spanning generations, as some other countries do.

“For Trump and other Republicans to make this proposal a centerpiece of their campaigns is not just to scapegoat immigrants for the economic anxieties of the middle class but to scapegoat innocent children as well. It is shameful.

“Your view?”

I think it’s the “innocent children” aspect of this effort that offends me the most.

This is not an original thought. I heard it day before yesterday on CNN, but it’s worth sharing here.

It goes like this.

Donald Trump’s poll numbers are as high as they’re going to get; they’re at around 22 to 25 percent. Republican voters who currently prefer other candidates — that’s about 70 percent of them or so — overwhelmingly don’t want to vote for Trump as an alternative.

That means Trump has no chance of being nominated, let alone being elected president of the United States in November 2016.

Thus, he’ll drop out before the first contest in Iowa, which is just about four months away.

You see, the idea goes, Trump has been calling his GOP foes “losers.” He doesn’t want to be labeled as such.

So, he’ll find a way to couch his withdrawal in non-loser-like fashion. Maybe he’ll find a way — and this is my thought — to declare his intention to “pursue other interests.”

Then he’ll be gone.

Actually, I want him to stay the course. Take it to the limit, Donald. This is too much fun to let go.

Like this:

Anchor babies. That’s the newest catch-phrase that is drawing some criticism for the way it sounds in describing some U.S. citizens.

Donald Trump is using the term. So is Jeb Bush. The two Republican presidential candidates — who’ve been batting each other around lately — seem to agree on the use of the term.

It’s meant to define individuals who were born in the United States to foreign nationals. They become U.S. citizens by virtue of their birthright — as prescribed in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But get this: Three other GOP presidential candidates actually are “anchor babies.” Marco Rubio was born in the United States to Cuban parents. Ted Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. And then there’s Bobby Jindal, born in the U.S. to Indians. All three men are “anchor babies.”

They say such things to convey some sort of macho image. The phrase they quote, of course, came into being in the 1980s when the Texas General Land Office sought to call attention to littering.

Not very macho, right?

Politicians today are fond of debunking “political correctness.” Oh, they say, “That’s just so PC. Let’s cut that crap and speak the truth.”

Actually, what I find happening to political correctness is that it’s becoming a punching bag for politicians who think it’s OK to be crass, rude, uncaring or lacking in humanity.

Pay attention, Donald Trump. I’m talking about you.

I agree that political correctness at times can be taken too far. Politically correct speech at times does drive me a bit batty. Maybe the most maddening example of PC language appears under photos of hunters who’ve killed game. The caption might refer to the hunter posing with a beast he or he has just “harvested,” to which I say, “BS, man. You ‘harvest’ cotton or wheat.”

Trump uses the anti-PC dodge whenever the media question the intemperate language he uses to describe his Republican Party primary field opponents. Jeb Bush is a “loser”; Lindsey Graham is an “idiot.”

Yes, some of them have hurled personal insults at Trump, too, but Trump tends to employ the anti-PC dodge as his justification for saying outrageous things about other human beings.

Perhaps politicians ought to think more about the Golden Rule than about whether it’s OK to toss political correctness into the toilet.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

It’s clear, yes? Everyone born in this country is a citizen of this country.

Why, then, do some Republicans — maybe most of them — want to amend the Constitution to single out those who have the misfortune of being born to individuals who are here illegally?

GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump wants to end the “birthright citizenship” clause of the 14th Amendment. He’s led the amen chorus on that one. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has joined him.

But as Eric Greider of Texas Monthly points out, some Republican presidential candidates are standing for the Constitution. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is one of them; so is U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida; same for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

What do these men have in common? They all have been elected in states with substantial Latino populations, which of course is the audience being targeted by those who want to repeal birthright citizenship.

If we get rid of this citizenship provision, we will have to amend the Constitution. Don’t conservatives generally stand foursquare behind the nation’s governing document?

“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd asked Donald Trump this past weekend how he planned to fight the Islamic State. He said he’d wipe out the bad guys. Would he deploy American troops? He said “yes,” more or less.

Then came the question: Who gives you military advice?

Trump’s answer: He watches the news talk shows and that’s where he gets the information and expertise he needs to do battle with ISIL.

Interesting, yes?

I think so. Here’s why.

Because the military experts who show up on these news talk shows cannot possibly tell the TV audience all the details involved in launching military campaigns. They might or might not have access to privileged information. You know, the classified stuff that only they can know and must be kept out of the public domain.